Mother
Teresa the 'angel of mercy' dedicated herself to the service of mankind and
served god amongst
the poorest of the poor, sick and the dying for more than 50 years of her
life.

Teresa was born as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhin on 26th August 1910 in Skopje, now the
capital of Macedonia to Albanian parents. She was the youngest of three
children. Exposed early to prayer and service, she was deeply religious. At the
age of 18, she left home for Dublin, Ireland, to join the Loretto abbey and
become a nun of the Roman
Catholic church. After her training, she was given the name of Sister
Teresa. Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto, were very active in India, doing
missionary work. She came to India
on January 6, 1929 to become a teacher and was moved at the sight of the crippled and helpless
people on the pavements. She taught in St. Mary's convent school in Kolkata
for 15 years later on became the headmistress. In 1937, she took her final vows
as a nun, in Darjeeling.

In 1947, on a journey to
Darjeeling later referred by her as the most important journey of her life she
had a vision or call to leave the convent, to live among the poor and to take
care of the sick and the dying, the hungry, the homeless, to be God's Love in
action to the poorest of the poor, which was the beginning of the Missionaries
of Charity. At first she did not get the permission to leave the convent but in
1948 she got the permission specifically from Pope Pius XIII to leave the the
Loreto community and work among the city's poor. She left the convent, took
basic training in nursing and went to live in the nearby slum. She wore an
inexpensive and simple white sari with a blue border, which became the most
recognised symbol of the Sisters of Charity.

Following one of her former
student, others joined her in her mission. In 1948, she opened the first slum
school. As the congregation grew she sought approval from the Pope and shifted
to 54A Lower Circular Road, which became the Mother House. The Missionaries of
charity was officially established as a religious congregation for the
Archdiocese of Calcutta in October 1950. The organisation devoted to the working for the
destitute, now have thousands of homes and members all over the country and
abroad. Calcutta became the center
of her humanitarian activities. Her first home was 'Nirmal Hriday' (pure
heart) for
the sick and the dying, and then ' Shishu Bhavan' for the disabled, orphaned and mentally
retarded children, 'Shanti Nagar', a colony for lepers where they were
cared for, they could learn a skill, build their own houses and could work on
their own fields, AIDS hospices and
so on. The first home outside India was founded in 1965 in Venezuela. Others
were later opened in Italy, Tanzania, Australia, US, Communist Cuba, former
Soviet Union etc.

Mother
Teresa became an Indian citizen in 1962. She has received many national and international awards in recognition of her
noble work for humanity. The first award being Padmashri for distinguished
service (1962), then the Magsaysay
Award the same year, Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971), Good Samaritan Award
(1971),
John . F. Kennedy International Award (1971), Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International peace (1972), Nobel Peace Prize (1979), Bharat
Ratna (1980), Rajiv Gandhi Sadbhavana Award
(1993) etc. were some of them.

In 1983, at the age of 72,
Mother was diagnosed with a serious heart condition and her health steadily
worsened. In 1990, Mother had decided to step down as the head due to her
failing health and so called a conclave of sisters to choose a successor. But in
a secret ballot, she was re-elected with one dissenting vote, that was her own.
In 1991 she underwent heart surgery and in March 1997, Sister Nirmala a former
Hindu converted to Roman Catholic was elected to succeed Mother Teresa as leader
of Missionaries of Charity. On September 5, 1997 the 87-year old mother died of
severe cardiac arrest at the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Kolkata.

The late mother taught the world the beauty in giving and left behind an enormous
organisation with the will to continue her work. Mother was beatified by Pope
John Paul II at St. Peters square in Vatican, on October 19th 2003, seven years
after her death. Henceforth the mother will be referred to as the The Blessed Teresa
of Kolkata.